Inside Intel Larrabee - CPU-GPU Convergence

Intel's Larrabee processor is Intel's first multicore processor and first stand-alone graphics card. Larrabee is also a swipe at graphics chip makers Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices, whose powerful graphics chips are starting to look like a threat to Silicon Valley's king of silicon chips. Intel Larrabee will have numerous x86 processor cores (Intel won't reveal how many processor cores) and support for OpenGL and DirectX, allowing it to run existing games and software requiring high-end graphics.

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Intel believes Larrabee is the incarnation of the merge between CPU and GPU (Graphical Processing Unit) performance. Pushed to the edge of performance, CPUs are adding cores and computing power. Motivated by higher-quality graphics and data-parallel programming, GPUs are being tapped to do more general computing tasks.